The world is amidst one of its greatest public health challenges due to the tragic impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic. We have witnessed the extreme strains on health systems but also their resilience and responsiveness to the pressures they have faced. We must also recognize that it is not only COVID-19 that has put a strain on health systems. Other infectious diseases, economic pressures, environmental disasters, staff shortages, and chronic diseases are amongst the many other challenges health systems are facing.
In support of the challenges that global health systems are facing and UN Sustainable Development Goal 3, Good Health and Well-being, BMC Health Services Research has launched a collection that welcomes submissions that contribute to our understanding of how health systems respond and resist the pressures they face, and how we can sustainably strengthen health systems for the future.
For more information about the scope of the collection, please read our introductory commentary article written by our Guest Editors.
Prof. Siri Wiig, University of Stavanger, Norway
Siri Wiig, PhD, MSc, is Professor and Centre Director at SHARE - Centre for Resilience in Healthcare, at the University of Stavanger (UiS), Norway. The SHARE centre is a large research group in Norway doing research on quality and safety in healthcare, with over 70 researchers affiliated. Wiig is a full Professor of Quality and Safety in Healthcare Systems at the Faculty of Health Sciences, UiS. Key research interests are resilience in healthcare, patient safety, quality improvement, safety investigations, user involvement, risk regulation, leadership, and learning in socio-technical systems.
Prof. Jane K. O'Hara, University of Leeds, UK
Jane K. O'Hara is a Professor of Healthcare Quality & Safety, based at the University of Leeds, and Deputy Director of the Yorkshire Quality & Safety Research Group. Her research interests include resilient healthcare, exploring and operationalizing safety theories, safety measurement and management, and patient and family involvement in patient safety.
This collection welcomes submissions of Research articles, including systematic reviews, quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods research on the topic of resilience and responsiveness in all areas of the health system. Reviews, Study Protocols, and Comments will be considered at the discretion of the Journal’s Editor. Please note that unsolicited Reviews and Comments will not be considered, as per our submission guidelines.
Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process overseen by our Guest Editors, Prof. Siri Wiig (University of Stavanger, Norway) and Prof. Jane O’Hara (University of Leeds, UK). Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.
Before submitting your manuscript, please ensure you have carefully read the submission guidelines for BMC Health Services Research. Please ensure you highlight in your cover letter that you are submitting to a collection. Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Snapp. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select "Resilient and responsive health systems in a changing world" from the dropdown menu".
Please visit this page to find out more about our article-processing charges. Members of Health Systems Global can claim a 20% discount on our article-processing charges, more information can be found here.
Articles submitted after 31st January 2023 will not be eligible for inclusion in the collection.
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Resilience in healthcare is the capacity to adapt to challenges and changes to maintain high-quality care across system levels. While healthcare system stakeholders such as patients, informal carers, healthcar...
Health systems worldwide struggled to obtain sufficient personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators during the COVID-19 pandemic due to global supply chain disruptions. Our study’s aim was to create a ...
Stock-outs of some life-saving drugs, such as emergency obstetric drugs, are evident in many health facilities and have been reported to be the leading cause of maternal mortality and morbidity for women from ...
The studies of hospital resilience have been of increasing importance during the last decade due to disasters and pandemics. However, studies in developing the domain and indicators of hospital resilience were...
Health care has the intrinsic obligation to preserve health. This concept is also applicable to planetary health. Nitrous oxide (N2O) lacks clinical indications in modern anaesthesia, while it is a high-potential...
Prompted by recent shocks and stresses to health systems globally, various studies have emerged on health system resilience. Our aim is to describe how health system resilience is operationalised within empiri...
In May 2021, the Irish public health service was the target of a cyber-attack. The response by the health service resulted in the widespread removal of access to ICT systems. While services including radiology...
Responsive and resilient strategies to reduce high rates of maternal and infant mortality and clinician shortages are needed in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Malawi has some of the highest maternal...
Vaccine hesitancy is recognized as a significant public health threats, characterized by delays, refusals, or reluctance to accept vaccinations despite their availability. This study, aimed to investigate the ...
Central to Safety-II is promoting resilience of healthcare practices. In the “Room for Resilience” research project we focus on the role of horizontal and vertical accountability in healthcare teams and aim to...
When the COVID pandemic hit the world, there was need for applied guides and training materials to support frontline health care staff to manage patients effectively and safely and to educate themselves and co...
For patients receiving daily opioid agonist treatment (OAT) for opioid dependence, several countries relaxed treatment guidelines at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. This involved longer take-home inter...
The COVID-19 pandemic provided a unique opportunity to learn about acute health organisations experiences implementing a pandemic response plan in real-time. This study was conducted to explore organisational ...
Pandemics such as Corona are currently major health concerns worldwide. Health system responsiveness to the medical and non-medical needs of patients during pandemics is essential. This study aimed to examine ...
Historically, efforts to improved healthcare provisions have focussed on learning from and understanding what went wrong during adverse events. More recently, however, there has been a growing interest in seek...
Hospital discharge is a complex process encompassing multiple interactions and requiring coordination. To identify potential improvement measures in care transitions for people with complex care needs, intra- ...
Certain factors contribute to healthcare professionals’ adaptive capacities towards risks, challenges, and changes such as attitudes, stress, motivation, cognitive capacity, group norms, and teamwork. However,...
Epidemics caused by emerging respiratory viruses are challenging for the health system of most societies, and preparedness of the health system in responding to such epidemics is important. Therefore, the aim ...
Resilience, the capacity to adapt and respond to challenges and disturbances, is now considered fundamental to understanding how healthcare systems maintain required levels of performance across varying condit...
The delivery of quality healthcare for women and children in conflict-affected settings remains a challenge that cannot be mitigated unless global health policymakers and implementers find an effective modalit...
COVID-19 caused disruption to healthcare services globally, resulting in high numbers of hospital admissions and with those discharged often requiring ongoing support. Within the UK, post-discharge services ty...
The Symptom and Urgent Review Clinic was a service improvement initiative, which consisted of the implementation and evaluation of a nurse-led emergency department (ED) avoidance model of care. The clinic was ...
Response to COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh was led by the Government of Bangladesh aided by Non-Government Organisations (NGO) among others. The aim of the study was to explore the activities of such an NGO t...
Theories of learning are of clear importance to resilience in healthcare since the ability to successfully adapt and improve patient care is closely linked to the ability to understand what happens and why. Le...
Although slack is an asset to resilient hospitals, it is usually explicitly discussed only in terms of the quantity and quality of beds and staff. This paper expands this view by addressing slack in four infra...
Sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing a dual burden of chronic human immunodeficiency virus and non-communicable diseases. A pragmatic parallel arm cluster randomised trial (INTE-AFRICA) scaled up ‘one-stop’ integra...
The COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on healthcare systems around the world, and lack of resources, lack of adequate preparedness and infection control equipment have been highlighted as common challenges....
Health systems aim to provide a range of services to meet the growing demand of Dubai's heathcare system aims to provide a range of services to meet the growing demand of its population health needs and to ens...
The coronavirus pandemic has had a profound impact on organization and delivery of care. The challenges faced by healthcare organizations in dealing with the pandemic have intensified interest in the concept o...
The Correction to this article has been published in BMC Health Services Research 2023 23:731
As health systems struggle to tackle the spread of Covid-19, resilience becomes an especially relevant attribute and research topic. More than strength or preparedness, to perform resiliently to emerging shock...
Disruptions to healthcare services during the COVID-19 pandemic are well-recognised problems. However, a dearth of research exists on disabled people’s experiences with accessing these services. A scoping revi...
Workflow interruptions in pharmacies contribute to dispensing errors, a high-priority issue in patient safety, but have rarely been studied from a systemic perspective partly because of the limitations of the ...
Resilient healthcare organizations maintain critical functions and high-quality care under varying conditions. While previous research has focused on the activities of frontline healthcare professionals workin...
COVID-19 has caused significant public health problems globally, with catastrophic impacts on health systems. This study explored the adaptations to health services in Liberia and Merseyside UK at the beginnin...
Resilience is often referred to when assessing the ability of health systems to maintain their functions during unexpected events. Primary healthcare forms the basis for the health system and thus its resilien...
Health care facilities are responsible for preventing and controlling diseases and must be resilient enough to deal with crises. The Iranian health care facilities have faced challenges in managing COVID-19 pa...
In pandemics, it is critical to find a balance between healthcare demand, and capacity, taking into consideration the demands of the patients affected by the pandemic, as well as other patients (in elective or...
BRAC (Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee), the largest NGO globally, implemented a community-based comprehensive social behavior communication intervention to increase community resilience through preventi...
The Correction to this article has been published in BMC Health Services Research 2023 23:60
Discussions of health system resilience and emergency management often highlight the importance of coordination and partnership across government and with other stakeholders. However, both coordination and par...
Amidst ongoing calls for increased health systems resilience, gaps remain in our understanding of how health systems can reach further into communities to ensure resilient service delivery. Indeed, public heal...
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had various impacts on businesses and workers worldwide. The spread of infection has been reported through cluster outbreaks in the workplace, and World Hea...
Research on health systems resilience has focused primarily on the theoretical development of the concept and its dimensions. There is an identified knowledge gap in the research on how to build resilience in ...
To provide high quality services in increasingly complex, constantly changing circumstances, healthcare organizations worldwide need a high level of resilience, to adapt and respond to challenges and changes a...
Hospitals are the biggest users of the health system budgets. Policymakers are interested in improving hospital efficiency while maintaining their performance during the economic crisis. This study aims at ana...
The prevailing patient safety strategies in suicide prevention are suicide risk assessments and retrospective reviews, with emphasis on minimising risk and preventing adverse events. Resilient healthcare focus...
Resilient healthcare research studies how healthcare systems and stakeholders adapt and cope with challenges and changes to enable high quality care. Team leaders are seen as central in coordinating clinical c...
The COVID-19 pandemic severely exacerbated workplace stress for healthcare workers (HCWs) worldwide. The pandemic also magnified the need for mechanisms to support the psychological wellbeing of HCWs. This stu...
The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged healthcare organizations and puts focus on risk management in many ways. Both medical staff and leaders at various levels have been forced to find solutions to problems the...
The balanced scorecard (BSC) has been implemented to evaluate the performance of health care organizations (HCOs). BSC proved to be effective in improving financial performance and patient satisfaction.
The Quality Improvement Regulation was introduced to the Norwegian healthcare system in 2017 as a new national regulatory framework to support local quality and safety efforts in hospitals. A research-based respo...